Thank you, John Lanchester. As always admirable clarity and good sense.

If this is already the normal procedure everywhere, i.e. a google scholar import, universities’ library catalogues will be useless tomorrow.

Argh…

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

Medievalist friends! Applications are open until end of Feb for a fully-funded PhD in Arthurian Literature with the brilliant Louise D'Arcens @medievalafterlives.bsky.social and myself, based between Sydney (Australia) and Groningen (The Netherlands). Please share widely! tinyurl.com/f7su6urv

Metadata is hard especially for Medieval Manuscripts ... check out our latest blog post about the @peripheralmss.bsky.social project: peripheralmss.org/metadata-for.... #midwestmss #medievalmss

Great! Now do a Customs Union!

Watch this. Keep going until 2013.

Yesterday I told someone “I’m going to steal that but credit you,” so this is me crediting: Tai-Won Kim at Sogang University has students write a short essay by hand on an in-class exam, but then also later expand it into a polished draft using both AI and human feedback. I like that combination. +

Brilliant!

Worried about the environmental impact of using #LLMs in ( #DH ) research, but not sure where to start? I got you covered! We reviewed the research & ran a #DigitalHumanities case study with carbon reporting, sharing all the tools, code & info: doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... ( #DHd #GreeningDH)

Science Christmas The Upturned Microscope

Not that there would ever be a ‘good’ time to tell 1000 academics their jobs are at risk, but doing it in mid-December when people are on their knees with exhaustion, and leaving a parallel decision hanging over professional services staff who find out in January adds a certain cruelty to brutality

If you’re a #Humanities #ECR & in/willing to travel to York on 17 December, join me & the @historylabplus.bsky.social team for our 2025 ‘Christmas Connections’ event, a FREE & informal opportunity to support each other, build professional connections, & sample the city’s heritage & eatables. 👇&🧵

Are you interested or do you know someone who's interested in doing a PhD on Arabic translations of the Bible? The new #BibliaArabica long-term project is looking for candidates! (tbh, that would have been my dream position a few years back) Spread the word!

Call for applications, free school on Arabic-Islamic Astrolabes at the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Sciences in Frankfurt; March 23 workshop for experts, March 24-26 classes for advanced students. Classes in English, details below; apply by January 15th, 2026. #HistSTM #MedievalSky

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Funny you should mention that arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/w...

Head of UCL Special Collections, Sarah Aitchison, @saraha73.bsky.social, reflects on the digital 'Prejudice in Power' exhibition. The visuals and eye‑catching quotations have drawn passersby to pause, reflect, and engage with UCLs eugenic history. blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll... #eugenics

An exciting new postdoctoral position focusing on Old English epistolary materials

Over 80 broadsides & slip-songs were recently added to our online catalogue by our volunteer Sofia. She talks about some of her favourites in our latest blog: specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk?p=31210

"A specific risk is that generative AI tools always produce an answer, even when the historical sources are incomplete or silent. ... If you received an archival reference or document description from an AI chatbot, please keep in mind that it may be inaccurate."

“Her library estimates that 15 percent of emailed reference questions it receives are now ChatGPT-generated, and some include hallucinated citations for both published works and unique primary source documents. ‘For our staff, it is much harder to prove that a unique record doesn’t exist.’”

Hooray!

If you have sample images from a museum, library or archive collection and want to see what metadata could be created about them, drop @aboutgeo.bsky.social a line! #FF2025 #MuseTech25

Booking is now open for Making Medieval Manuscripts! A practice-based course where we make ink, cut quills, illuminate, make pigments and bookbind, using #medieval techniques and materials. We also explore early medieval art. No experience necessary! #bookhistory ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...

NOT A MUSEUM (of books) - the central role of libraries in universities explained here scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/12/02/g...

We have an exciting event in Jan for PGRs, ECRs and those starting out in fields involving the past. Join us in considering how the Society could contribute to early career support by enabling the exchange of ideas and peer support in these challenging times. www.sal.org.uk/event/early-...

Professorship of Bibliography and Modern Book History- University of Oxford - Faculty of English Language and Literature in association with Jesus College #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPP968/p...

I know about book breaking but had no idea that fragment breaking was a thing. A martyrology leaf offered recently by a respected dealer is now offered on eBay, having been recently (within the past 2 months) sliced in half. The other half has gone missing. *angry sigh* Caveat emptor fragmentorum.

I was just reminded of a two-part blogpost I wrote on the methodological challenges when analysing calendar fragments: blogg.lnu.se/mapping-sain...; blogg.lnu.se/mapping-sain.... My favourite illustration of these challenges is the fragment below. [Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr. 25608]

What is a Book of Hours? How to read a calendar? What is an Atlantic Bible? And a Paris Bible?... If you've ever wondered any of the above (who hasn't?) join my latest online course for @imems.bsky.social: 'Books of Devotion: Medieval Bibles & Books of Hours' imemsdurhamlearn.com/books-of-dev...

15 and + years 🎉 Our teenage years online are all about unrestricted screentime Go and explore Parker Library On the Web and find our 560 medieval and early modern manuscripts www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/articles/cel...

Would love this!

For anyone interested in vikings: a symposium on the impact of the viking Great Army, to be held at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on 24 April 2026.

Palaeography 🧵! Or why it can take a historian a while to confirm what they already suspected must be the case and not really get any further than they were—but this time with confidence 😂 I'm working with documents that list the incomes of medieval French lordships, so a lot of it is about grain.

No, *you’re* tearing up at xkcd…

'Exiting the market' is such a crap euphemism. It's not like the 'university' will then go and apply all its assets to another market. Those assets (human and non-human) will be dispersed, wasted, destroyed. Un-creative destruction. Which we can't afford as a society.

Post-doctoral Mellon Fellowships or early career medievalists Pontifical Instute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto DL 1 Feb 2026 For more information, see: pims.ca/article/post...

Excellent library job in Cambridge.👇

This is a late ancient (5-7th c.?) Greek account of the life of a rich woman who was raised Jewish, converted to Christianity when her parents died, lived for 20 years as a male monk named John, was discovered & made head of a woman's monastery, & was later martyred

📚 Whether you're an undergraduate, postgraduate, academic, or independent researcher, our research grants and By-Fellowships are designed to support work using our collections here at Churchill Archives Centre. 🔗 Click the link to find out more & apply: buff.ly/JGsTtHK

Are you a PhD student & interested in using museum collections in your teaching or research? We're running a *free* doctoral training programme for students at any institution to learn about working with collections. Find out more: collections.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/

Cambridge people! Do you like Shakespeare? Do you like material culture? You can hear me talking about BOTH in the Henn Lecture @stcatharines.bsky.social, 1 December, 5.30pm. There will be a reception after the lecture to launch Textile Shakespeare; info here www.caths.cam.ac.uk/about-us/new...

I very much appreciate research at scale on the representativeness of and biases in digitized archival collections. Some examples below. 🧵

Calling all #nuntastic folks, I just discovered this and WOW I have questions (that will soon be answered with next day delivery.....!) LOL #earlymodern 🗃️

University of Glasgow Library has a remarkably generous visiting research fellowship scheme - come hang out with me in Glasgow! Get funded! www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li...

Come and apply to be the Professor of Bibliography & Modern Book History @engfacoutreach.bsky.social & @jesusoxford.bsky.social (and work closely with us @bodleian.ox.ac.uk). Following a long line of great scholars: Don McKenzie, Kathryn Sutherland, & Dirk van Hulle ... my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

How have books shaped the way we think? In January Anna Somfai will teach an online short course on books about science and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Book now 👇 #MedievalSky @ies-sas.bsky.social @warburginstitute.bsky.social @sas-news.bsky.social palaeography.uk/study/short-...

Love medieval manuscripts? Love public libraries? Love Bristol? Don’t miss this FREE exhibition: bristol.events.mylibrary.digital/event?id=250...